If you're wondering why your website isn't getting the traffic you want - BEFORE you decide to rebuild it, check this document out!

1. A publication by
Marketing Toolkit #1
Website checklist
Introduction

2. A website should enhance your business, not hinder
it, but all too often, a website doesn’t get the results
you expect, can look a bit tired, and doesn’t really
convert the visitors you do get into potential
customers.
Before we look at re-designing a website, we need
to take a look at the good, bad AND ugly of our
current website. Before we jump in and ditch the
whole thing, we need to make sure that we don’t
‘throw the baby out with the bath water’. For
example, you could have built up some serious SEO
ranking with your current website, which could be
lost if we start again from scratch.
This article is intended to walk you through the
process and current ‘thinking’ around website design,
and what elements an effective website should
possess.
So, let’s get down to the nitty gritty…….. We’re going
to cover the following topics:
1. What’s going on with your current website
2. What you want to achieve with a new build
3. Analysis of where you’re getting traffic
4. What assets does your website currently have
5. What are your competitors doing
6. What’s your unique proposition
7. Your target market
8. Search Engine Optimisation
9. Get ‘em to do SOMETHING when they visit you!

3. 10. Ongoing content
11. Social media
12. Who’s in control - you or your web designer?
__________________________________________
The purpose of a website these days is to support
your other marketing efforts. It can no longer sit
alone in terms of a lead generating machine. The
look, feel and purpose of a website affects your
brand awareness, sales strategy AND how you’re
thought of out there both in cyber land and in real
life!
Before we rush in and set to with creating a new
website - for many reasons, we may want to
redesign our site, we need to start at the basics and
take a really good look at our current website.
1. What’s going on with your current website?
We need to get our analysis hat on and take a look
at the current site’s performance against determined
parametres:
(i) The number of visitors you’re getting: number of
visits/visitors/unique visitors
(ii) How many are staying on your site and for how
long. Check out the % bounce rate
(iii) The current rankings for your keywords
(iv) How authoritative is your domain name? Does
your domain name contain important keywords that
describe your business?
(v) Does your website make it easy for people to

4. part with their email address/information? Does it
contain a sign-up form?
(vi) How many conversions does your site get?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions,
then you’re seriously undermining the ability of your
website to do what you want it to do.
You need to add Google Analytics to your site to be
able to access this information. It’s free, but will
need some techy ability to add it to your site.
Once you’ve determined where you are currently,
you can then start thinking about what you want
your site to do for your business.
2. What do you want to achieve with a new website
build?
Just because a website looks fantastic, there’s no
gaurantee that it will achieve it’s objectives. The
hard work really goes on before the website is
designed. Consider the following:
1. Measurable objectives ie, to gain 25% increase in
email address capture
1. Check that the keywords you’re using actually
attract traffic ie, people are searching for those
keywords. A great tool is Google External
Keywords to analyse your keyword search volume.
Be very clear about what you want your website to
do, ie, do you want to collect email addresses so that
you can email market to these leads? Do you want

5. to sell product online? Do you want your visitors to
contact you? Do you want your visitors to share
your website?
Until you know exactly what you want your site to
do, you can’t move onto the next step.
3. Do you know where your traffic is coming from?
Dead important to know this - the difference
between browsers and buyers! Which marketing
‘pillar’ is driving your traffic? Do you get a lot of
traffic from Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter? Are you
getting organic traffic from Google when people are
searching for your type of product? Are you getting
traffic from PPC (Google Adwords) or Facebook Ads?
How much are you paying for advertising online v
how many conversions you get from it?
4. What assets does your current website have?
Again, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water
- you may have many assets to your current website
that you won’t want to lose. Have a think about:
1. Your most popular pages
1. Your best performing keywords
1. Your number of inbound links to your site
All of these points have SEO asset which you won’t
want to lose.
5. Check out the competition
What are your competitors doing well? What are

6. they doing badly? What could you improve on?
You can run both your website and your competitors
websites through http://marketing.grader.com and
W3C Validator to see how you’re performing against
your competitors.
After this analysis, you can then put together an
action plan to ensure that you build the right website
to achieve your objectives.
6. What’s your unique proposition?
The content that you write for your website should
clearly convey your UNIQUE PROPOSITION. In other
words, what’s in it for your visitors? Why should
they invest time in having a look at your website.
What are they going to GAIN from it?
Remember that, when writing content, you simply
MUST write for your visitor, not Google’s robots. If
you’ve chosen your keywords properly, it shouldn’t
be difficult to write these keywords into your
content, but still keep it ‘humanised’.
Since June 2011, Google have changed the way they
rank websites. 50% of their rankings are from
metadata, but interestingly, 50% of their search
rankings are from activity on other sites, ie social
media, blogs etc.
7. Your Target Market
The best way to identify your target market is to

7. visualise the sort of person that will buy from you.
The more specific you can be, the better. For
example, if you consider their:
Gender
Age
Marital Status
Where they live
What they do for a living
Do they have a family
What they do in their spare time
What websites they use
What their interests are
Their income
What motivates or concerns them
The more specific you can get to with this exercise,
the more you’ll find writing the content for your site
easier, because you have a ficticious target customer.
You may have a few different target customers, so
it’s worth time spent on identifying these.
8. Search Engine Optimisation
As mentioned before, you don’t want to be trashing
pages that already have good SEO rankings and/or
traffic. If you plan to move some of these pages,
then 301 redirects are really important so that you
don’t lose this value.
Pick out a couple of important keywords per page.
Optimise these keywords in your header tags and
build internal links to these pages.

8. 9. Get ‘em doing SOMETHING when they come to
your site!
How frustrating it is to see your traffic increasing,
but at the same time, your bounce rate increases.
Ouch!! Website experiences are a bit like a ‘journey’.
Your visitor is investing time by having a route round
your site but it’s important that you tell them what
you want them to do.
Specific calls to action should be evident on every
single page of your website:
Call us now for your free quote……
Download the best way to………
Buy this now…….
Your calls to action should benefit your visitor, for
example
‘Subscribe to our newsletter’ is a load of tosh really,
but something like
‘Lose 10lbs in 10 days with Ashtunga Yoga. Start
your weight loss programme here NOW!’
Click here to find out how.
This is much more engaging because there’s a
benefit to your customer.
Other calls to action could include:

9. Ebooks
Promotions
Contests
Free Trials
Contact us
Newsletter subscriptions
10. Building Content
The more content we load onto a website, the better
it ranks with Google. For example, a 10 page static
website will receive much fewer visitors than a 10
page website that is constantly being added to with
fresh content.
Start a blog - it is well known that companies that
regularly update their blog will get around 55% more
website visitors and 88% more leads than those who
don’t. (Source taken from Hubspot.com)
11. Social Media
Engagement on social media platforms will add
massive credibility to your marketing proposition. In
fact, Google implemented ‘Caffeine’ in June 2011 in
which they rank interaction and engagement by
companies just as highly as they do traditional SEO.
The main learn from this is by creating a buzz online
about your business, Google will pick up on it and
think you’re great!
80% of what you do on social media sites should be

10. about YOU. Remember ‘social’ means ‘social’ - you
wouldn’t go to a party and suddenly engage in
selling your products. It’s the same with social
media. Only 20% of what you ‘put out there’ should
be about up selling your products. You have to kind
of ‘earn the right’ to talk about your products, not
ram them down people’s throats!
If you need more information about building social
media strategies, then drop me a line at
alison@marketinginmotion.co.uk - I’d be happy to
talk it through with you.
12. Who’s in Control? You or your web designer?
Lastly, but certainly not leastly, I hear this all the
time - my web designer makes all the changes to my
site. These days, it’s just NOT GOOD ENOUGH to
have no control over the content on your website,
your site stats or your ability to engage with your
visitors.
If you haven’t got a Content Management System
attached to your website, then you’re really missing
a trick. Any website designer worth their salt will
integrate a CMS system into a website build in order
for you to manage it yourself. If your designer
charges you for it, then find another one! He’s
ripping you off!
Being in control of the marketing of your business is
paramount to success. A website is no exception.
Once you’ve paid for the website build, there will be
a small hosting fee to pay to host the site, but apart

11. from that your website should be totally under your
own control.
There are many other nitty gritty things to consider
when redesigning a website, but here are the
important factors that a good website should have:
1. Great, clean design
1. Information and calls to action above the fold
1. Telephone number in the top right hand corner
1. Calls to action on EVERY PAGE
1. Clear navigation - don’t reinvent the wheel!
1. Data collection points
1. Clear CONTACT US information
1. Ongoing content upload
1. Blog
1. Integration with social media platforms, slap a
video on You Tube (big, big plus!!)
1. Google Analytics
1. CMS system
If you would like to know more about redesigning
your website, or anything that’s been written here,
please give me a call on
07788 545047
01604 601 455 or
0034 96 558 7052 or email me at
alison@marketinginmotion.co.uk